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  • OUTLOOK

Could an algorithm predict the next pandemic?

Machine learning could help to identify the viruses most likely to spill over from animals to people and cause future pandemics.
  1. Simon Makin

    1. Simon Makin is a freelance writer in Reading, UK.

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In February 2021, seven Russian poultry-farm workers were reported to have been infected with H5N8 avian influenza. This subtype of bird flu had never been known to infect people before, and the virus’s genetic sequence was quickly uploaded to the genetic data repository GISAID. For Colin Carlson, a biologist at Georgetown University in Washington DC, it presented an opportunity. “I immediately thought, ‘I want to run this through FluLeap’,” he says.

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Nature 610, S42-S44 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-03358-4

This article is part of Nature Outlook: Pandemic preparedness, an editorially independent supplement produced with the financial support of third parties. About this content.

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